Pondering a what if…

It’s the unthinkable. I hear murmurings but no one really wants to talk about it… including me. What if it doesn’t change or changes more slowly than hoped? And I’m not talking about the weather.
Opening my home email Tuesday, there are photos from a friend. She and her family are living overseas. Her daughter used to attend the Crested Butte Community School. Another friend is getting ready to spend the winter in warmer climes down south. Two kids will be in Costa Rica instead of the Community School for a big part of the academic calendar.
Taking a phone call at work, it is a guy I spent some time with at the Keystone Science Camp as a chaperone. His kid and my kid are in the same class. He is a builder and he is in Southern California. “I couldn’t find work in Crested Butte so I had to come here to get a job,” he explained. “Nice weather, too many people. I’ll be back, though.”
I hear of another family in the same boat. With no work in the valley, the father takes a couple of the kids with him to Chicago where he has a project. The mother stays here with a couple more.
The family of a very smart eighth grader has found a great opportunity at a school for the gifted in another state. They will be relocating for the school year. My son is palling around with a friend who spent this last year in Crested Butte going to school here. His family with three kids is going back to Texas at the end of the summer.
A co-worker’s high school-aged daughter will be attending school closer to the Pacific Ocean than the Rocky Mountains next year. Another family is moving to Evergreen.

Local, state and national figures show the resort industry continues to take a hit as far as numbers. We are all in the resort industry. Sales tax in Crested Butte is way down. Fewer people are coming here so less money is being passed around, and it is frankly harder to make a living in the valley.
Commercial real estate owners pay a huge share of property taxes in Colorado, including the taxes for the school bond. Looking at all the For Rent signs around town, commercial real estate looks a tad weak at the moment.
There are a dozen Help Wanted ads in the classifieds and a page and a half of For Rents or For-Sale-By-Owner ads.

School superintendent Jon Nelson says there is a reason he has less hair today than a few years ago. “It’s the crazy thing about this business. We do our budgets and staffing and everything based on our best guess for enrollment,” he explained to me. “But we don’t know anything really until they walk through the door. We think about the ramifications of the economy all the time and we are trying to figure it out like everyone else.”
Nelson said based on informal conversations with families in the community, he and the staff at the Crested Butte Community School expect enrollment to be about the same this year as last—about 500 students. “But we won’t know until school starts.”
I’m not so sure about that 500 figure.

As I watch the school campus transform daily, I wonder if the bond would pass today. I have my doubts. I have my doubts about any tax passing today or this fall. No one could foresee the quick, precipitous change in the economy, but that change has become a reality.
The question I fear is; after we build this great new addition to the community school, will we have to close up a wing of the old building to save money and accommodate fewer students? Like I said… it’s sort of like the weather of the last month: No one really wants to talk about it.